Acknowledging the Presence of Inner Life in Therapy The paradox lies in the treatment modalities for patients often not being aware or curious about the patient’s inner life, mirroring the patients’ own lack of awareness about their inner selves. The historical focus of treatments being away from inner aspects could have been a way to effectively reach the patient. The emphasis on behavioral therapy, as advocated by Salmanu-chan, was due to the belief that patients couldn’t effectively utilize introspective curiosity. However, some patients may benefit from acknowledging the presence of their affective and fantasy life in therapy, eventually helping them access and address these deeper aspects of themselves. Transcript: Speaker 2 You know, it’s sort of a paradox that the treatment modalities that are outside an awareness or even a curiosity about the patient’s inner life, parallels for many, not all, for many Of these patients, their own unawareness of their inner life. And perhaps, do you think that the reason that the treatments, at least early on, were so focused away from that, because that was the only way they could reach the patient? I remember you mentioned Salmanu-chan. I grew up during his day here in Philadelphia, and he was a sort of a larger-than-life man who wrote important work on, you know, structural family therapy. And he said that the reason that we don’t ask people or try to discover their inner lives is because they can’t do anything with that type of curiosity. They just register it as a thing, a behavior. And we’re going to talk about alexithymian a little bit. And so he thought that the treatment had to be behavioral, that is who sits next to whom and who’s talking to whom and how you arrange the family, the lunch table and things like that. But I take it from what you’re saying that you think, again, not for all, but for many patients, that even though they start off not having access to their affective life, much less their Fantasy life, that keeping in mind that it’s present can be useful to eventually helping them reach that. Speaker 1 I think that that is absolutely true. (Time 0:14:21)